The Iowa caucuses only matter because people believe they matter – By Andrew Prokopandrew (VOX) / Jan 13, 2024
It’s a small state that can make a massive impact on the political world. Here’s how that happens.
Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.
Polls show Donald Trump as the clear favorite to win the GOP Iowa caucuses on Monday, January 15. But the true stakes of the contest are about more than just who comes in first. The political world will be watching Iowa’s results closely in an attempt to get a sense of where the GOP race is going.
The caucus results will give one early indication of whether Trump really will romp to the nomination or face a closer fight than expected. They’ll basically determine whether Ron DeSantis can stay in the race. Yet for Nikki Haley, they may not mean all that much — expectations are low for her in Iowa, since she has a better opportunity to break through in the next contest, the New Hampshire primary on January 23.
It may seem somewhat strange that Iowa’s results would need decoding like this. But that’s key to how Iowa’s influence works. It isn’t about the paltry number of delegates at stake. Rather, Iowa matters because of how it affects the perceptions of the political world.
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